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In IPA, many alphabets are so close that they are indistinguishable!

Such as [bʊk], [ɓʊk], or [βʊk]. Even though they DO have some minor differences, but all the listener heard is "book".

So is there any "Simplified IPA" where they contain all possible pronunciations but yet omit all those indistinguishable alphabets!?

Much appreciated!

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  • They're not indistinguishable at all, and anyone trying to learn a language which distinguishes them will either learn them or never acquire the language to any fluency. – curiousdannii♦ Nov 20 '19 at 3:45
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The reason that all the different characters for “the same sound” exist is because they’re not the same sound, and trained linguists/linguistic researchers can hear the difference. Any “simplified IPA” wouldn’t be a true “IPA”, and would not be able to accurately represent the difference in sounds; you would end up with the present situation where the spelling of words in a language not suited for the alphabet being used does not accurately reflect the actual pronunciation of the word (for example, Spanish vaca, cow, which some people hear as though it should be spelled baka, because neither b nor v in the Latin alphabet is an accurate representation of the sound used).

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  • I totally understand, but is there any system for the "regular people" (not trained linguists/linguistic researchers)!? Because some differences in IPA are truly "too minute"! One really could never tell the difference "without training"! – PiggyChu001 Nov 19 '19 at 13:18
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    Any system for the "regular people" wouldn't be "universal" in the sense that IPA is; you'd simply end up with Yet Another Not-Quite-Accurate Transliteration Convention. You might as well pick a dictionary that doesn't use IPA (virtually any dictionary aimed at users below the collegiate level would be a good candidate) and adopt its system for representing pronunciations. – Jeff Zeitlin Nov 19 '19 at 13:31
  • Another possible source for an alternative pronunciation representation system might be to look at phonetically-based systems for teaching children to read, such as DISTAR or the Pitman Initial Teaching Alphabet [Wikipedia link] [Omniglot link], or any of the alternative systems listed on Omniglot under the headings "Alternative spelling/writing systems" or "Phonetic Alphabets". – Jeff Zeitlin Nov 19 '19 at 13:47
  • OK. Is there any statistic research on the IPA usages!? Maybe I could pick some "most often used" alphabets for my language. – PiggyChu001 Nov 19 '19 at 14:35
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    If the language contains all possible pronunciations, then the full IPA is the only possible solution. If you don't want to deal with the minute differences between e.g. [β], [b], and [ɓ], then your language doesn't actually contain all possible pronunciations, and you can simply choose one of the alternatives to represent whichever sound your language does have. – Jeff Zeitlin Nov 19 '19 at 15:22
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If you're notating a language that uses [β] or [ɓ] but does not distinguish it from [b], that is, if there are no words such that changing one of these consonants to the other changes the meaning of the word, then for most purposes you write it as /b/; so that is a “simplified IPA”. This is called broad transcription, written with slashes to distinguish it from narrow transcription using brackets. A famous example: English /p/ includes both [p] and [pʰ], which are distinguished in many languages including Zulu, Hindustani, Mandarin.

No language makes phonemic distinctions between all pairs of phones represented by distinct symbols in IPA; but every symbol exists because some language contrasts it with others.

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